My Mom is looking at window replacements for her 30 yr old windows, and I had suggested the Simonton Prism or 9800 lines, but the window rep offered the View Point 3000 line as a similar in quality and functionality but 2/3 the cost. Does anyone have experience to offer? Money is a bit of an issue but not that key if it means significantly better windows. She will probably only be in this house for another 10 years or so.

I highly doubt that that the Simonton's would help sell your home unless your selling it to a windowinstaller?distributer.The last thing peope look at are the windows unless they are in bad shape.

Todd,

5 years ago I would totally agree. More recently, the Real Estate market has become much more competitive and we have replaced windows in homes that are currently on the market and the home has sold shortly thereafter. We have also been called in for Real Estate office consultations to educate their agents on window features and quality.

In this market, the difference may be enough to sell the home and the 9800 is certainly a better looking window.

I agree. I did a job last year before the owner listed the house. About 6 months later I got a call from the Realtor who sold the house. He scheduled with me to give him an estimate and while I was there, he said the house sold in about 6 weeks and one of the important features the buyer mentioned was the new windows. The Realtor also placed an order with me for new windows for his house b/c he liked them.

Anecdotal? Sure, but I think it depends on the housing market in your area to a degree. It also depends on the type of buyer. An old townhouse for sale as a started home to a young couple will likely not be as important. An upper middle-class market will have more importance. One of the things I've noticed about the market in this area is the fixer-uppers don't sell as fast b/c with new lending criteria such as 20% down payment often leaves new buyers financially unable to do many upgrade for a few years. A home with windows, siding, roofing, upgraded kitchen and baths tend to sell better in this market.

Cheap windows take away from a houses desireabilty in a more upscale market just as much as cheap carpeting or siding etc.

I live in Iowa and went with the Viewpoint 3000 series. They were installed in December. I have had ice on the inside of my windows everytime it gets really cold. The reps have been out and the contractor has checked everything in our home to make sure it is not the house itself. Our himidity is perfect also. A rep from the company came and replaced one of the windows and it still got ice. After much frustration they have agreed to buy these windows back. My contractor finally admitted that these were maybe a little more towards the bottom of the barrell.

They now want me to buy Simonton Prism....I have one sitting in my living room to look at. He also brought a Tundra from Walsch company that is usually used in Wisconsin. I can't find anything on that particulare window so I am not going with it. The Simonton window however appears to be a much much better window quality and looks way better. You can just tell it is a nicer window by compairing it to the one's currently in my home. It seems so much more beefy too...deffinitly better made. The price is another story. The contractor wants 1700.00 more for the Simonton Prism. I am not sure if that is out of line or not. I know I will be happier with the Simonton but not sure I want to invest anymore money. I got the total bit for 4600.00 with installation for the Viewpoints. 13 double hung 3000 series.

Can anyone tell me if that is reasonable. All I want are windows that dont ice over and let the wind in as the 3000 series do.

We had Norandex Simonton windows installed when we were building our home 11 years ago. Two years ago we noticed quite of few of them were starting to 'cloud up' and become obscurred. (the windows were 9 yrs old) A local distributor came out to evaluate the problem and determined that they all had seal failure. They were still under warranty so new window glass was ordered. It sounded like an easy fix, but two years later, the situation is still not resolved! We have had four large shipments of window glass be delivered to our home (approx 12-18 windows each time). The majority do not fit any frame in our home. It's crazy! We're not sure where they are getting their measurements from. The local distributor has measured numerous times. But the glass sent from Norandex didn’t match those measurements. Our installer has measured and provided numbers to the company. (Norandex provides the glass for windows under warranty, but the homeowners hire and pay for an installer) The glass that arrived didn't match his measurements either. The Norandex company rep has personally flown out to our home twice to evaluate, measure and attempt to rectify the issue. So far without success. His most recent visit was three months ago, and this afternoon we came home to another large shipment of windows sitting in our driveway. We had been out of town and had not received an email or call indicating they were going to deliver the glass. At this point, if we were to build again, we would steer a wide birth around Norandex as a company! It's all 'sun and roses' when things are going well. But when there''s a defect they definitly drop the ball!

The serial numbers Norandex uses to identify their windows appear to be a large part of the problem. They are located on stickers found on the side of each window and are supposed to be like fingerprints, unique for each window. Unfortunately they do NOT correspond to accurate information in the Norandex database. As mentioned in my prev post, multiple people (including the installer we hired) have taken the time to measure and provide accurate information, but Norandex appears to be relying solely on their serial numbers. Three months ago we told their company rep “Your serial #s obviously aren't working!” We suggested he try another technique such as personally measuring or making templates. To our amazement he became quite defensive of the accuracy of their ‘system’. And, as a side-note, he arrived at our house with a clip-board and a leather portfolio, but did not have a tape-measure. So we provided one for him to use.

We do not know if the shipment we received yesterday is accurate yet. But I can tell you that the previous 3 shipments included sizes that were not correct, shapes that we don't have anywhere in our home, untempered large floor-to-ceiling panels and grid patterns that don't match any of our other windows.

At the risk of running this post even longer, here are two examples of our 2 yr saga- Example 1: Two transom windows have failed and need to be replaced. 1st shipment- they were not included, 2nd shipment- they were included but the wrong size, 3rd shipment- they were perfect in size, but had grid patterns that didn't match 3 others that are located in the same room. At a quick glance, they do not appear to be included in the 4th shipment we received yesterday. Example 2: The serial # on one of our smaller windows that failed was listed in the Norandex database as a 'Dealer Demo Window' that we were told should not have been sold and/or installed in a customer's home.

That is a tough situation... Things happen such as seal failures and even system glitches with s/n's etc, but the length of time that you have been dealing with this situation is pretty inexcusable, as is the fact that every measure was not taken to rectify this properly after the first or second incorrect batch.

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